ion to the various noises that reached him from the
farmhouse, the unusual activity that prevailed this evening, the
trampling of feet, the shouts and cries, in the end excited his
curiosity. And it was to the retirement of his sequestered chamber that
Silvine, sobbing and disheveled, came for shelter, her form convulsed by
such a storm of anguish that at first he could not grasp the meaning of
the rambling, inarticulate words that fell from her blanched lips. She
kept constantly repeating the same terrified gesture, as if to
thrust from before her eyes some hideous, haunting vision. At last he
understood, the entire abominable scene was pictured clearly to his
mind: the traitorous ambush, the slaughter, the mother, her little one
clinging to her skirts, watching unmoved the murdered father, whose
life-blood was slowly ebbing; and it froze his marrow--the peasant and
the soldier was sick at heart with anguished horror. Ah, hateful, cruel
war! that changed all those poor folks to ravening wolves, bespattering
the child with the father's blood! An accursed sowing, to end in a
harvest of blood and tears!

Resting on the chair where she had fallen, covering with frantic kisses
little Charlot, who clung, sobbing, to her bosom, Silvine repeated again
and again the one unvarying phrase, the cry of her bleeding heart.

"Ah, my poor child, they will no more say you are a Prussian! Ah, my
poor child, they will no more say you are a Prussian!"

Meantime Father Fouchard had returned and was in the kitchen. He had
come hammering at the door with the authority of the master, and there
was nothing left to do but open to him. The surprise he experienced was
not exactly an agreeable one on beholding the dead man outstretched on
his table and the blood-filled tub beneath. It followed naturally, his
disposition not being of the mildest, that he was very angry.

"You pack of rascally slovens! say, couldn't you have gone outdoors to
do your dirty work? Do you take my place for a shambles, eh? coming
here and ruining the furniture with such goings-on?" Then, as Sambuc
endeavored to mollify him and explain matters, the old fellow went on
with a violence that was enhanced by his fears: "And what do you suppose
I am to do with the carcass, pray? Do you consider it a gentlemanly
thing to do, to come to a man's house like this and foist a stiff off
on him without so much as saying by your leave? Suppose a patrol should
come along, what a nice